The ESA's Canadian cousin, ESA Canada (ESAC), has issued a press release in support of a copyright reform bill introduced by the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper (left).

Joan Ramsay, president of ESAC, praised the measure:

It's simple: Every time someone acquires an illegal copy of a video game, money, in turn, is not going to those Canadians who work so hard to develop and publish games. That's money that cannot be reinvested in creativity, job growth, and industry development. Copyright reform is essential to strengthen our competitiveness as an industry.

But not every Canadian is so pleased with the proposed new law. David Shipley of the Kings County Record writes:

I'm not opposed to making illegal to download copyrighted music, movies and video games... But I'm dead set against any law that would make it illegal to take music from legally-purchased CDs and put it on your own personal computer or MP3 player - that's fair use.

If the Tories include fair-use killing provisions in the updated copyright law, I hope it is defeated either in the House of Commons or by the courts.

A report in the Canadian Press labels the bill controversial:

The long-awaited changes [to the bill] are a hot political potato for [Industry Minister] Prentice, who must find a middle ground between business interests who want strict protection for intellectual property, including recordings and films, and Internet users accustomed to downloading material free.

There's speculation is that Mr. Prentice will try to come down the middle as much as possible, imposing a $500 fine on individuals caught downloading copyrighted files... The video game industry wants the law strengthened to allow Internet service providers to monitor high-speed downloads and shut down transfers containing unauthorized copies of games and other files.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist is concerned that the legislation will be too restrictive - like the USA's:

I expect Minister Prentice to characterize the law as a Made in Canada solution, yet the reality will be that the key provisions are born in the USA. In doing so, the new law will have serious negative effects for Canadian consumers who could be locked out of their own purchased content, as well as for privacy, education, and research.

As GamePolitics has previously reported, here in the US, the ESA has been complaining for years about what it views as lax Canadian copyright protections. Yet, some officials north of the border are loathe to implement a Canadian version of the US's consumer-unfriendly Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Comments

Btw, I think Atari and Midway will drop out too, but mostly travesti because these guys have done nothing travesti or little and need to start saving costs. and dizi izle

YES.

Now I don't have to get off my ass for the important shit anymore!

Whats next, ordering pizza from Xbox live?

Wait... I think that sounds like a good idea.

But I think voting should MAKE you get off your ass, and see outside or a second while you go vote. I mean, your picking the president of the United States of America for God's Sake... least you can do is drive down there and punch out a card.

I'm all for freedom of ttnet vitamin speech and allowing rent a car game makers to put whatever they want in games, but there's one thing about this app that has me scratching my head. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from araç kiralama the previous article araba kiralama on this I gathered that players can use Google maps in-game to find the other (real-life?) dealers in their area. If this is the case, has travesti anyone considered what's stopping someone from using this app to actually move drugs between hands for reals?

But majority araba kiralama of their outrage araç kiralama stems from what it could DO TO children, not the content itself. Talk to one of these people and you'll find they don't think any books kiralık araba should be banned from children. Mention American Psycho and they talk about kiralık araç the redeeming value of using imagination to construct a story. Reading, no matter what the content, is largely viewed as a consequenceless activity for people of any age. The reason why I mention American Psycho is because of the content itself. Gaming never has and likely never will have any scenes where someone has sex with a severed head. Not gonna happen. Yet despite this, they'll fight tooth and nail to protect their children from two boys kissing in Bully but whatever they read is harmless... yeah.

The entire arguement is kiralık oto based upon a social normality inflicted by luddites who can't figure out the controls for Halo so it's frightening and terrifying and obviously the cause of youth violence on the rise even though, in reality, it's in decline (which is actually a HUGE suprise given minibüs kiralama the economies status). In a perfect world, we would have parents that actually parent. The idea of sales restrictions on media on oto kiralama any form to accomidate parental unwillingness to get involved with their child's life is the real problem to me. Here I am, 32 years old, and being held up at a self-scan rent a car needing to show ID before I can buy a $10 M rated game all because Soccer Momthra can't be bothered to look at the crap Billy Genericallystupidson does in his free time. It's too hard for her, so I have to suffer?

All this dose is ensure the media mafia can sue people for up to 20 grand when and prevent them from porting their media to their players of choice, because it prevents the breaking of protection schemes.

The emdia mafia needs to get away from harassing and telling consumer what they can do with media in private use settings and that including sharing it, they need to focus on illicit profit and compete with the industry they themselves have made.

On a side note it seems modchips will be legal again in the UK if things keep going in the right direction.

Im actually none to happy with this developments I have never liked the conservative goverment, and this bill seems QUITE FLAWED after reading a lot about it. and SCREAMS of the conservatives trying to please the US.

granted in the end is not gonna matter much, the people who did it in the pass will keep doing it, also if I remember well the 2005 trying of the same thing failed , this migth suffer the same fate. who knows, and if not the courts migth over turn it for it is flawed.

That being said, Im not againts copyrigth protection, Im againts this particular bill.

These guys have been trying to pull this crap since the eighties. In this video the one woman in it claimes you can only install one software on one computer at a time, have to purchase a compy for each computer.

LMAO, good ol' "Don't Copy that Floppy" that video is a huge pile of BS, nothing like a complete creepy looking guy magically showing up on a crappy computer monitor and being a total tool rapping to get the kids/middle school play quality actors interested.. It gives me a headache, can't watch it with the sound on.

But don't forget those companies that were involved, including a little companies with games that aren't being made anymore because of all the floppy copying, sadly we never heard of Neverwinter Nights again. Oh yeah and they had the nerve to use Tetris. >_>

Clinton is to blame, but it got bipartisian support in the USA. Congress critters love their money and they serve their corporate masters, and do not represent the direct needs or wants of the people.

Note-both McCain and Obama have the same ultimate goal-to serve their corporate masters.

Hopefully, enough people will get upset in Canada about a DMCA law there and will let the politicians know. In the USA, the masses are not that concerned about privacy, but in Canada and especially Europe, that's another matter entirely.

Even 500$ / song is a stupid idea. To give you an idea: in Quebec, driving at 110 km/h in 30 km/h cost you 495$ ticket. Now i'm asking, what is more dangerous, a teenager downloading a Avril Lavigne's album or, god forbid, a video game or some crazy driver making speed racing?

Back on the point, I do believe that law would hurt sales more than anything else. I usually try my games and download my music cd's before I buy them. Good game? I buy it. Bad one, I erase it. Same for music.

What I'd like to know is, in the event that the bill is passed, what then happens to the blank media levy that Canadians currently have to pay? We're currently paying it now as a subsidy to compensate the artists/studios/corporations for the supposed lost money for the currently-legal free copies obtained via "non-traditional" methods. If said copies suddenly become illegal, would the levy still be in place? I suspect that it still wouldn't disappear, or even if it did, the price difference wouldn't be passed along to the consumer.

Forget about the possibility of $20,000-per-file lawsuits against the 15 million Canadians who leave their music in a "share" folder for others to download; the reason this bill is written so poorly is because Jim Prentice has his lips firmly applied to the backside of US trade reps and entertainment lobbyists who would like nothing better than to wipe out any kind of grassroots media spreading and shut down the Canadian artistic community. This isn't just anti-consumer legislation, it's cultural warfare: say hello to nothing but Hollywood movies in our theatres, the Nashville sound on our country-music stations, and the American anthem at our hockey games!

That the ESAC is supportive, even in the face of the overwhelming evidence that this will be bad for every other industry and the country as a whole, proves to me that they're every bit as incompetent as their American counterpart. Along with C-10 (the bill to refuse tax credits to movies with 'objectionable' content) it's another piece of the groundwork that the Tories are laying to try and remove any trace of creative endeavour from us. I'm not a big fan of the current Liberal administration either, but at this point I'd vote for 'em if it meant getting rid of the boneheads in power.

He's been fighting this kind of "corporations first, screw the consumer" copyright reform for quite some time now, and has been credited with organizing the protests that stalled the last version of this bill.

About the only good thing he's found is that they do "notice and notice", instead of "notice and takedown", which should cut down on the DMCA "take it down because I don't like it" abuses that are rampant in the US, but on the other hand, adhering to ACTA means that the "safe-harbour" stuff goes out the window anyway, so instead of sending a notice they'll just sue the ISP directly...

I'll be fighting this every step of the way. While I don't promote piracy I do believe consumers and companies need to come to an agreement on what's fair. All I see right now is a bunch of corporate lobbists pushing this "sue-everyone-on-the-planet" bill on us.

It's simple: Every time someone acquires an illegal copy of a video game, money, in turn, is not going to those Canadians who work so hard to develop and publish games

WOW WHAT A COMPLETE LOAD OF BS! SUCH AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION ITS UNTRUE!

Sorry, although i personally believe in paying for games ( i dont pirate anything ), i know people who do. To say that they would spend cash on these games if they couldnt pirate them is true in maybe 1 in 1000 cases. (theres an article on gamasutra ill try n find that talks about that exact statistic if i recall correctly, and it was from a game dev doing research into its own copy protection , which they eventually dropped, as a result of the analysis! - EDIT: found it 'Casual Games and Piracy: The Truth by Russell Carroll ' http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350 - they actually found that over say 50,000 sales, DRM protected around 50 lost sales!)

Majoritively (the people i know) they pirate it because they are UNSURE if they actually want it, play for like an hour say, 'this is crap' and delete it. Just saves them going to the store picking it up, bringing it home, playing it, hating it, getting back in the car driving back , and refunding it. I KNOW people who pirate games, and ALWAYS buy them if they like it. It doesnt ALWAYS mean (not saying never) , that a developer has 'lost money'. eg 100 pirated downloads does NOT = 100 lost sales. I HATE how some people over simplify the issue and state that it does.

To say that its simple and that EVERY time some1 pirates its a lost sale is CRAP. I would actually argue that piracy can infact sometimes even GENERATE sales.

For example, I actually once saw an episode of Prison break that was pirated ( i didnt pirate it, a friend did n had it on o his pc) and the dvd boxed sets went from being on my 'never ever gonna buy' list to ' wow i really want this'. Ive now bought 2 series of prison break. Thats like £50 i wouldn never have spent had it NOT been for piracy! The same went for one of my friends who watched a few pilots of anime series on download, loved them n spent HUNDREDS on boxed sets!

Additionally look at Stardock's fantastic work with Sins of a solar empire and the galactic Civilisations series.

No copy protection, but all relly good sellers making a good profit... In fact they ENCOURAGE distribution to friends (can be installed from the CD, requires no key etc) and simply offer ADDITIONAL content if you pay for a registration. That way they reach a far bigger audience than they normally would through just those that decide to buy it there and then in a store, and actually GENERATE sales form people playing, getting hooked, and subsequently paying to get the extras!

Well actually my friends are proof that piracy helps sell a game. I bought Sins of a Solar Empire then lent my friend a copy which is allowed under the EULA. He LOVED it and purchased himself a copy. He then lent a copy out and now THAT friend purchased the game.

So due to their pro-consumer EULA they made 3x the sales than they would have otherwise.

Think about that. If you stop piracy completely then do you REALLY think those who play the games for free will actually purchase the game for the price listed? The economic answer is no. So the reality is there is probably about a 1% loss in sales. How many more sales due to marketing the game through experiencing it do you think offset that 1%?

-Loudspeaker "Volume helps to get a point across but sharp teeth are better."

cheers for adding that! i knew i wasnt the only one who had seen piracy GENERATE sales!

(stardock rock with Sins of a solar empire)

the good thing is (see my original post at the top of this reply tree for a link to the gamasutra article) that its not even a 1% loss in sales due to piracy. Its a 1:1000 ratio. Eg for every 1000 pirates you stop with DRM only 1 (yes ONE IN A THOUSAND) would have actually paid for the game!

so thats what like, 0.1% of pirates actually = a LOST sale!

(check out the article for the details! its amazing to actually see a REAL case study!)

And nevermind all those games that I now refuse to buy (I buy just about all my games) because they have StarForce or some other BS copy protection on it that installs itself on my machine.

As for piracy increasing sales... this isn't necessarily true of games but I can think of at least one example where it is definitely true. Photoshop. It is likely the industry standard of photo imaging software purely because it's pirated so much. Let's face it, a graphics shop will buy a copy, but if people didn't pirate it, where would they hire people (few people can afford to buy the program for personal use).

For example, I actually once saw an episode of Prison break that was pirated ( i didnt pirate it, a friend did n had it on o his pc) and the dvd boxed sets went from being on my 'never ever gonna buy' list to ' wow i really want this'. Ive now bought 2 series of prison break. Thats like £50 i wouldn never have spent had it NOT been for piracy! The same went for one of my friends who watched a few pilots of anime series on download, loved them n spent HUNDREDS on boxed sets!

Additionally look at Stardock's fantastic work with Sins of a solar empire and the galactic Civilisations series.

No copy protection, but all relly good sellers making a good profit... In fact they ENCOURAGE distribution to friends (can be installed from the CD, requires no key etc) and simply offer ADDITIONAL content if you pay for a registration. That way they reach a far bigger audience than they normally would through just those that decide to buy it there and then in a store, and actually GENERATE sales form people playing, getting hooked, and subsequently paying to get the extras!

''

Again, not saying its a hard and fast rule, but in MY experience (again personal, not indicative of everyone) piracy HAS helped generate sales. That experience RIGHT THERE is evidence for piracy generating sales is it not...? You can argue that its only a small piece of evidence, perhaps it is, but Its a pretty commonplace experience where i live. i KNOW FOR A FACT that sveral of my friends have tried things they would NOT have ever bought because it wasn't their usual preferred genre of game, and have liked it (un expectedly) and then bought it as a result. I have friends who have played a badly put together demo, hated it, tried the download on advice from a friend and then bought the game.

And why on Earth would people who pirated a working copy of a game buy that same game

fair point, but again, in MY experience (not indicitave of everyone) piracy hasn't been to 'steal' the content (although i completely agree it'd be naieve to say that nobody pirates to steal, of course some people do), its been more of a 'try before you buy' type thing. They buy it because they understand that somebody has spent money to make it, and respect that. THey just dont want th hassle of having their fingers burnt buying a piece of crap game (kane and lynch for example) and then having the hassle fo driving back to the store and refunding it, and the store then cant sell the game as new so money is lost anyway! (with Pc games in england , most stores wont even accept returns! ) all that is avoided and is far easier by downloading, trying then buying. Not only trying for 'fun' but also compatibility and system specs.

There's no evidence it hurts it though either (the argument goes that a person who pirated it, likely wouldn't have bought it in the first place anyway...). At least not enough to justify treating all your paying customers as if they WERE criminals.

I'll admit I've downloaded anti-copy cracks. Why? Because I was sick of all the anti-copy stuff in the software I've legally purchased. Checking for CD, checking my computer, reporting back to a server on the net, monitoring my other apps, reporting private information it scoured from my computer, etc.

Ok, so why not punish them? Why punish me, a legal media consumer, in a way that doesn't even begin to address how the Chinese pirater got ahold of his copy? I get $20,000 fines for wanting to skip commercials on my DVD, or watch it on my iPod, and the Chinese pirater gets... nothing, because he stole the master un-encrypted copy from the Chinese DVD plant in the first place...

God I hope the DMCA doesn't spread. The DMCA is easily one of the most short-sighted laws ever passed.

Want to know why textbooks for college are so expensive? (I spent $800 a SEMESTER) it's because the DMCA removed the fair-use exception to copywright royalties for textbooks.

Basically, it used to be that if you were printing a textbook that was a compilation of essays, articles etc, you got to pay drastically reduced fees (or sometime no fees at all) for the use of those articles.

DMCA said nope, no more, you have to pay full price. Which means that a $20 book is now an $80 book.

Forget all the other problems with the DMCA, THAT right there is evidence of its stupidity. Textbook prices have risen close to 300% in 10 years. THATS INSANE.

@Dark Sovereign- Format shifting on its own is not illegal based on case law (notably the Diamond case, which relied on the fair use doctrine), although certain RIAA representatives have put their foots in their mouths regarding that particular issue. However, if the CD is protected by a technological protection mechanism (i.e., DRM), it is illegal to circumvent that protection mechanism under the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act except under very narrow circumstances, even when such use would otherwise be legal. So the answer is "it depends." :P

Mostly because the bill was clearly written to appease US business, not to conform to WIPO. DMCA, with all the consumer rights taken out.

It's the DMCA had the US corporations managed block all the exceptions that legislators put in. Jim Prentice had claimed he was going to consult with consumers, but he's met with a total of two groups. US business interests, and Canadian arms of US business interests.

The NDP, the party who's members are generally against employing US-like laws and whatnot and one of who's members was mentioned in an earlier article referenced in this one, is all about heavy duty left wing stuff so pretty much anything the currently Republican-led US has is pretty much something they don't want. That's the basic, non in-depth, knee-jerk version of things. It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but I don't want to go into that. I should point out also however that the NDP and the Tories are total opposites on the political spectrum, much like american democrats and republicans, so they're going to bicker over stuff, its a guarantee.

It all boils down to "anti-copy code". In most other WIPO compliant countries, breaking encryption/copy protection to time or format-shift (or make a backup copy) is allowed. In the DMCA, it is not. In C-61, merely watching a DVD on a linux box will net you a $20,000 fine, because you used unauthorized tools to watch it.

The bill is one big fat lie to consumers. It promises a lot of consumer "rights", but then disables all of them in the fine print. The DVD case is the best example. You are allowed to rip a DVD to your iPod. But acquiring or using the software needed to do so, is illegal, because DVDs are encrypted with DeCSS (doesn't matter that DeCSS is trivial to break).

So now all the software on my computer that I'm using to transfer my DVD collection to a HTPC, makes me a hard-core criminal...

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm